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Duke Porn Star Not Happy About Pakistan Censoring Her Twitter Photos

Belle Knox has the privilege of being among the first Twitter accounts with content banned in Pakistan

Update: Twitter later reversed this censorship, restoring the Belle Knox’s photos along with the other blasphemous tweets in June 2014.

Last week, TwitterTwitter was, well, atwitter about a post by Eva Galperin of EFF accusing the platform of “betraying its most fundamental values” by agreeing to strip content from the site in countries where the tech company doesn’t have an official business presence. Her argument was that Twitter should stand up for American values of free speech in countries where local law enforcement can’t barge into its office and take employees off in handcuffs. The post was inspired by a series of requests from a Pakistani bureaucrat earlier this month asking for the removal of tweets and Twitter content he considered “blasphemous” and “unethical.” The offensive material included political speech, images of the Prophet Mohammed, and the “media” portion of three porn stars’ Twitter accounts. Two of those pornographic accounts have since been suspended from Twitter all together but the third belongs to salacious celebrity of the moment Belle Knox a.k.a. Miriam Weeks, the Duke student outed as an XXX actress earlier this year.

Given the many porn stars on Twitter, it’s unclear why Pakistan went with Knox; perhaps the fairly widespread national dislike of Duke* is international. “Dear Twitter Team,” writes Abdul Batin of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority in his request, which was posted on Chilling Effects by Twitter. “Please block the following unethical links.” In the list that follows is the “videos and photos” portion of Knox’s account: https://twitter.com/belle_knox/media, which is thoroughly NSFW (not safe for work) as well as NSFP (not safe for Pakistan). Apparently, Batin doesn’t mind her tweets; he just doesn’t want his country to see her photos and videos. The same request asks for the removal of a url that would perform a search on Twitter for “Burn Quran” photos, calling it blasphemous.

As the New York Times notes, it’s the first time Twitter has removed content in Pakistan. Knox was not honored to help the Pakistani government lose its Twitter censorship virginity.

“I believe Mr. Batin has a problem with me because for whatever reason, I am his poster child: a woman with her own agency and free expression, some icon of perceived cultural degeneration that he feels he can censor to feel better about himself,” writes Knox in an email. “If he thinks I am a soft target, he’s going to be surprised. I stand up for sex workers, and will continue to do so because I feel that often, we’re disregarded as casualties. That said, my own curtailment of free expression in Pakistan seems very small on the greater world stage, where political groups based in sovereign countries are being silenced.”

One of the few shots from Belle Knox’s media page that I can post on Forbes

Galperin expressed concern in her EFF post that the requests for content removal had little legal basis to justify them, citing a local advocacy group. Bolo Bhi suggested that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, where Batin works, is empowered by law to make decisions about telecommunication licensing not the appropriateness of content on the Internet. “As disappointing as it is to see Twitter cave in response to pressure from the Russian government, it is even more alarming to see Twitter comply with Pakistani requests based on what Bolo Bhi describes as ‘little in the way of due process,’” writes Galperin.

Knox was similarly dismayed. “Twitter likes to state that it is an instrument for positive social change but whenever it serves to enable oppression any good it does is erased a thousand fold,” she writes. “The precedent that this action sets is troubling: If Pakistan can censor people on Twitter for offensive content, presumably it could do so for revolutionary content among the people of Pakistan as a method of social control. If Twitter was so quick to muzzle and mute journalists and citizens, would we have seen mass-movement social change like the Occupy Movement and Arab Spring in 2010? It is worth remembering that Twitter is not legally obliged to honor these requests, and that a principle undefended or asserted without support is not a principle at all… In the words of Solomon Burke: If one of us is chained, none of us are free.”

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This journalist decided to write this story on the same day that other international news sites were reporting the rape and murder of two adolescent girls in Uttar Pradesh. Perhaps she also read Knox tweet that she is proud of her recent performance for a site called Bangbus. The kind of fans Knox attracts in South Asia are the kind of people who committed the rape and murder in Delhi in December 2012. Shame on Kashmir Hill for giving her fellow Dukie her attention rather the victims of the pickup fantasies Ms. Knox revels in.